2010 Macebearer
Bruce Ralston
The 2010 Macebearer is Bruce Ralston, associate department head in geography, who has served the department and the university since 1976 in numerous administrative roles.
Ralston’s research specialties include GIS systems, geospatial analyses, and transportation geography. He teaches advanced courses in these areas and regularly gives his students opportunities to get real-world experience by responding to community needs for GIS development from organizations such as Knox County and the East Tennessee Historical Society.
Ralston founded Tennessee Electronic Atlas, a public resource and teaching tool for students to learn more about Internet-based cartography. He has shared his knowledge with city and county governments, as well as university engineering students. He works to be sure students learn the most state-of-the-art technologies and techniques, often attending seminars that he funds personally. He also works closely with industry to make sure his courses best prepare students for employment in the field.
Although Ralston will retire at the end of the academic year, he shows no signs of slowing. He’s currently building a suite of mapping tools for use with the 2010 Census, and in the past year has begun developing tools for free mapping services, such as Google Earth.
Ralston’s extraordinary combination of teaching, research, and service certainly qualify him for the highest faculty award.
The Macebearer is the highest faculty honor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, symbolic of the faculty’s commitment of service to students, to scholarship, and to society. The Macebearer is awarded to a faculty member who has exhibited longstanding commitment and service to the university community.